


Sleeping With A Friend

by aroseintheimpala



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, College AU, Dean and Cas as housemates, M/M, Sam and Benny know what's up way before Dean does, who are really an old married couple without realizing it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-11
Updated: 2014-05-11
Packaged: 2018-01-24 09:39:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,217
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1600217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aroseintheimpala/pseuds/aroseintheimpala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The one where Dean and Cas are housemates in college and just don’t see the point in moving out after that. Inspired by and named after the song Sleeping With A Friend by Neon Trees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleeping With A Friend

A knock on the door startled Dean, and he dropped his Xbox controller. It bounced off the coffee table and landed right on his left foot. 

“Fuck!”

He hopped around a bit as he rose from the couch and went to see who was the source of the disturbance. If it was Sam, he was going to punch him. He opened the door and found someone who definitely wasn’t Sam. A man stood before him with a flyer in his hands and a concerned look on his face. 

“Are you okay?” he asked. “I could come back if this is a bad time.”

“No, it’s fine,” Dean cleared his throat. “What’s up?”

“Are you Dean Winchester?” the man asked.

“Yes,” Dean said skeptically. 

He hated when salespeople took it upon themselves to find his contact information and knock on his door. This man didn’t look like a salesperson though. He was around Dean’s age, maybe 19 or 20 years old. He was wearing light-washed ripped jeans and a navy blue sweater. His unruly brown hair was sticking up in the front and gave Dean the impression that he had given up trying to style it a long time ago. The man held up the flyer so that it was in Dean’s line of vision and asked, “Are you still looking for a housemate?”

“Uh, yeah,” Dean said. He stepped back and motioned behind him. “Come on in.”

The man politely stepped around him and waited as Dean closed the door and extended his hand.

“What did you say your name was again?”

“Castiel Novak.”

“Nice to meet you, Castiel.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Cas! Are these dishes clean?”

Dean stared into the dishwasher and waited for Cas to answer. He didn’t see any noticeable food remaining on the plates in front of him, but that didn’t really mean anything. Living with Cas and his weird cleaning habits usually meant that the dishes were thoroughly rinsed before they even touched the dishwasher. Dean didn’t know why they even wasted the water. 

A muffled yell came from the direction of Cas’s bedroom upstairs. “No, and don’t you dare eat off of them anyways! It will take you five seconds to rinse it off yourself.”

“It’ll take you five seconds to rinse it off yourself,” Dean mumbled in a mocking voice. 

“I heard that!”

“Good!”

Dean rolled his eyes. They were always out of forks. He kept telling himself they just needed to buy more, but here he was, washing one by hand for the third time this week. 

“You know, you could just start the dishwasher,” Cas said as he entered the kitchen.

“That’s what I keep you around for!” Dean smirked. 

Cas sighed dramatically as he retrieved the dish detergent from under the sink and started the machine.

“What would you do without me?”

“Probably only use paper plates, for starters,” Dean admitted. 

“Probably,” Cas agreed. 

They crossed paths as Dean went for his breakfast in the microwave and Cas grabbed his mug out of the cabinet and filled it with coffee. The two of them had lived together for nearly two years now and operated like a well-oiled machine. Dean held the coffee creamer up over his shoulder as he leaned over to get the orange juice out of the fridge, and Cas grabbed it without looking up from the newspaper in his hands. 

“Walmart is hiring,” Cas commented.

“Hm,” Dean mumbled as he took a bite of his waffle.

“So is FedEx.” 

Dean sat his fork down, and it clinked against the plate. “Cas, I am not going to apply to FedEx or Walmart or whatever else you were about to say. I’ll figure it out, okay? Just not right now. Midterms are right now. The job hunt can wait until after graduation.”

“I’m just trying to help,” Cas said. 

He didn’t sound offended by Dean’s rant, and Dean wasn’t actually mad. They had this conversation on nearly a daily basis. Cas was a planner who already had his acceptance letter for graduate school hanging on the fridge (Dean’s idea), and Dean was just kind of going with the flow. His lack of direction was causing Cas more distress than it really should have been. 

“I know,” Dean said. “We can’t all be awesome like you though.”

Cas glared at him over the top of the paper, and Dean grinned as he left to get ready for class. Twenty minutes later, he descended the stairs and yelled, “You coming to Anna’s party tonight?”

He found Cas sitting in the living room flipping through the television channels with his feet propped up on the coffee table. 

“No,” Cas answered. “I’m not really feeling it tonight.”

“Suit yourself,” Dean shrugged.

Later that evening, Dean gracelessly fell through the door and felt around until he found the lightswitch. Cas rolled over and looked at his alarm clock. 2:34 AM. He pulled the covers over his face and groaned. He heard Dean stumble around for a few more minutes until the telltale silence let Cas know he had found a flat surface to pass out on. Despite how much his brain was telling him to leave it alone, he crawled out of bed and grabbed an extra blanket from the upstairs closet. He treaded lightly down the stairs and sighed at the sight of Dean sprawled out on the couch. Careful not to wake him, he pushed him into a more comfortable position and spread the blanket over him. He went into the kitchen and retrieved two pain killers and a bottle of Gatorade, which he left sitting on the coffee table. Finally, he turned the light off and went back to sleep. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Hey, Cas?”

Cas looked up from his pile of notebooks and highlighters. “Yeah?”

“Are you still going to live with me next year?”

Cas squinted his eyes and did that head tilt that Dean had grown very accustomed to seeing over the last few years. 

“Of course. Why wouldn’t I?”

“Just wondering,” Dean shrugged. “I just thought with you going to grad school and stuff, you might not want to stay with an aspiring writer who’s just going to be working some crappy job after graduation.”

“Dean, it doesn’t matter what you’re doing after graduation. I’ll stay as long as you’ll have me,” Cas reassured him.

Dean nodded and felt his lips turn up into a smile. “Okay,” he said.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“Dean! You’re coming tonight?” Benny asked through the speaker of Dean’s phone.

Dean looked at the calendar on his desk. “It’s Thursday, right?”

“Yeah,” Benny laughed. “Are you hungover or what?”

“No, just tired,” Dean answered. “Long day at work.”

“Whatever you say,” Benny said. “So, The Roadhouse? You in?”

Dean leaned back in his chair as Cas walked through the door and tossed his backpack aside. 

“Not tonight. Thursday is the only day Cas doesn’t have evening classes,” Dean explained. 

Benny let out a low whistle. “Never thought I’d see the day when Dean Winchester was whipped.”

“I am not whipped!” Dean exclaimed.

Cas raised an eyebrow at him as he passed the doorway, and Dean nodded his acknowledgment. 

“I’m just saying you never come out with us anymore, brother,” Benny drawled. 

“Yeah, well, maybe I just don’t see the appeal.”

“You don’t see the appeal of a bar full of single women and cheap alcohol?” Benny asked. “Man, you really are in deep.”

“Shut up,” Dean snapped. 

He got off the phone and pushed his feet against his desk so that his computer chair rolled into the hallway just in time to meet Cas walking out of his room. 

“You up for Call of Duty tonight?”

“I’ll order the pizza.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Sam looked at Dean’s shocked expression incredulously. “Seriously, Dean? You haven’t noticed?”

“Noticed what?” Dean asked.

“Oh, wow, you really don’t know. I swear, you are the only person I know who could be in a committed relationship with someone for years and not have a freaking clue.” 

Sam laughed as Dean’s eyes widened. 

“I’m not dating Cas!” he exclaimed. 

Sam leaned forward and looked at Dean across the table, a smug grin on his face. “Okay, so you’re not dating Cas. When was the last time you went out on a date?”

Dean looked down and mumbled soundlessly as he thought about it. He actually couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on a date. He and Lisa were pretty serious at one point, but that was before Cas moved in. He’d had a few one night stands since then, but damn it he didn’t think a single one of them had taken place in at least the last year and a half.

“I’m busy,” he said, crossing his arms.

“I ran into Benny yesterday,” Sam said.

“Oh, fuck me,” Dean buried his head in his hands as Sam laughed.

“I’m just saying that you spend a lot of time with the guy.”

“So I’d rather hang out at home with Cas than in a bar full of strangers. Sue me,” Dean retorted.

“Hey, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with that,” Sam assured him. “I’m just saying you should stop lying to yourself about what it really is.”

“Yeah, whatever.”

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

They had been watching the Batman trilogy all night, and it was nearly 4 AM. Even though they had started out on their own sides of the couch, they had both ended up in the middle about a third of the way through The Dark Knight. That’s how it usually worked these days. Neither of them minded so they didn’t mention it.

Cas never made it all the way through their Saturday night movie marathons, so it was no surprise to Dean when he heard Cas yawning for the fifth time. Cas was leaning into him as if some gravitational force was pulling him as he got closer and closer to falling asleep. Dean shifted so that his arm was on the back of the couch behind him, and Cas’s head fell until he was resting completely against him then. Dean just smiled and let his arm fall around his shoulders. He felt Cas nuzzle his head into the crook of his neck and rested his own head on top of the brown messy hair. They stayed like that until Dean woke him after the final credits rolled. 

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  
Dean tucked his legs under him on the couch and watched Cas pull off his shirt before settling down on the floor in front of him. Cas had been so stressed with graduate school that he had managed to get a muscle spasm in his neck, and Dean finally convinced him to go to the doctor. The muscle relaxers had helped a lot, but he still had knots all over the muscles in his shoulders and back. 

Carefully, Dean placed his hands on Cas’s tense shoulders and began to knead his knuckles into his skin. Cas sighed. Dean took that as a sign that he was doing something right and continued. After a few more minutes, Cas was visibly more relaxed and practically slumped over as Dean worked his way from his shoulders down to the middle of his back. He sat up, and Dean asked, “You good?”

Cas turned around with a blissful smile on his face. “Yes, that’s much better.”

He looked into Dean’s eyes, and Dean felt overcome by the affection he found there. There wasn’t just affection though. His blue irises were being shadowed by pupils blown wide. Dean didn’t have to look in a mirror to know his probably looked the same way. Cas reached up and placed his hand on Dean’s knee, and Dean swallowed around the lump forming in his throat.

He gave Dean’s knee a firm squeeze before using it as leverage to stand up and reach for his shirt.

“Thank you, Dean.”  
Dean nodded and gave him a small smile. “Y-you, you’re welcome.”

Cas went upstairs with his shirt in his hand, and Dean heard the shower start a couple of minutes later. 

He flopped over onto the couch and groaned, pulling a throw pillow over his face. This was not good. Not good at all. Dean was definitely in trouble.

\----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dean fell back against the pillows with a breathless laugh as Cas placed a knee on either side of his waist and leaned in close to press their lips together.

The Sorry game they had been playing was left sitting on the kitchen table unfinished. They might have still been in there playing if it hadn’t been for the way Cas kept rubbing his foot up and down Dean’s leg under the table, curling his bare toes under the hem of Dean’s jeans. Dean had finally had enough after about five turns and said to hell with fighting it. He stood up, looked at Cas, and said, “Bedroom. Now.”

Cas had responded with, “About damn time.”

That’s how they’d ended up in Dean’s room. 

“You know,” Dean exhaled. “I think we might be in danger of completely destroying our friendship right now.”

Cas cut him off with another kiss, and Dean dug his fingers into Cas’s hips.

“Shut up and kiss me, Winchester.”

Dean rolled them over so that he was the one on top of Cas and did exactly that.


End file.
